Sympathy Jones

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Subject:	Sympathy Jones
Time:	11:45 am

So there are lots of shows at the NYMF festival that have reached their potential, performing very short runs in Off-off houses. This isn't necessarily bad. It's just that no matter how artistically successful The Piper or Angle of the Sun, for example, might be, they will never have long runs on Broadway. They aren't written that way. They would die in Broadway houses, and there's a small audience for them. I feel this is true for many shows in the festival.

However, I I do think the 60s spy musical comedy Sympathy Jones could be very commercial. I really liked it, but at the same time, seeing it was an incredibly frustrating experience because of how much of it was a missed opportunity. And surprisingly, I don't think the fault is in the writing. At least, not much of it. I think it has a mostly terrific score, and the book, although light on laughs in the first act, isn't bad. (Although "Serve the Children" could use more double entendres in its lyrics; and the only entendre in the song - its title - is pointed out in dialogue. Huh?) Rather, it's in the direction, or lack of. The whole piece had a very thrown-together feel, as if we were watching the first rehearsal with the cast off-book, and they haven't really developed their throughlines yet. Talk about different actors being in different shows - there were three shows going on: the tongue-in-cheek spy musical comedy the authors wrote, the goofy cartoon half the cast was in, and the spy thriller with comedic overtones the other half was in. On paper, it sounds like they were all close, but really, in a piece as dependent on consistency of tone as this, it was a mess, and the shoddy production just pointed up the show's flaws.

I love Kate Shindle, and she has those great crazy eyes and elastic face that lends itself so well to musical comedy. But for some reason, she plays the first scene (until her first song) as if she were in a realistic drawing-room comedy. She slips in and out of the right style throughout the evening. I'm not saying that she should pump it way up and go over the top, because it is very important that the audience sympathize with Sympathy (no pun intended; if I had intended a pun, I'm sure I could've come up with a better one than that.) But when she is on stage with the girl playing Doris, the intern, there is a huge stylistic clash: Doris apparently thought she was in The Brain from Planet X or some evening-long cartoon, and Sympathy is reacting realistically to Doris' choices. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE - you can't react realistically to a cartoon! There are no realistic reactions. Again, I think that neither of them is wholly correct - both of them should be playing some happy medium, in between cartoon and realism: the land of Musical Comedy.

Clearly, Doris was directed like that. Or, if she wasn't, it's the job of the director to set her straight. I place the blame for this production not landing nearly as well as it could or should have at the feet of the director. The material could've been strengthened some, but that's the director's fault too, for not working with the authors. Then too, the director was responsible for a number of goofy and/or meta gags that took the audience right out of the world of the play. Yes, the show is silly. But everything in it has to be taken seriously on its own terms, or it won't be funny. Not only that, but the visual gags inserted weren't even very imaginative or amusing.

It's so funny to think I saw Charlie Pollock in Urinetown just a few years ago - he is looking old. Not bad, just old. Actually, he looks and sounds kind of like Scott Bakula up close. Anyway, I think his character needs a bit of an overhaul. Right now he's supposed to be so many different things - he's so bad at being a spy he's comedic relief; he's someone who has ability, but not nerve to follow through; he and Sympathy fall in love (or do they? I'm serious, I really don't know); and at times he's even bossy and commanding. It doesn't work well, and he needs clarification. I think all of those elements can be part of his personality, but they just appear out of nowhere. (And he's a part of a huge "SERIOUSLY??!!" moment - he's been lying on the floor, unconscious, during Sympathy and Kitty's "Confrontation," and then at the end of the song, he just gets up and disarms the bomb. REALLY?? Was he faking? I don't know! Maybe.)

Speaking of "The Confrontation," it's one of two moments in the show where really interesting ideas are explored in a kind of half-hearted way. It's almost like the authors weren't sure if they wanted to make it actually mean something or just riff on a cliche, and they ended up somewhere in between. Kitty tries to convince Sympathy to join her in taking over the USA, and talks about how men mistreat women as an incentive. It's interesting and ties in with the theme of the first scene, but it all happens a little quickly, and men weren't really that bad to Sympathy, so it's a little hard to swallow. Many people were giggling at such a seemingly-unmotivated character change when I saw it, but the intention seems sincere. The other moment is "A Story," in which Sympathy fights with herself about taking on all this responsibility before she was ready for it. Again, a GREAT idea, but it happens too quickly and needs to be set up better earlier in the text. It is set up, but not quite well enough.

Out of all the actors, I think Lucy Sorensen as Caprice, Sympathy's best friend, really taps into the style the best. June Summerhays is almost there, but she's still slightly tentative (she was a last-minute replacement.) But when she's on, she's ON, especially in her second-act duet with her henchman, "If I Didn't Have You." Sadly, her henchman, Tick Tock, is one of the actors who is in a cartoon, and is waaaay over the top. He has funny moments, as does Jimmy Ray Bennett as the Bond type, Nick Steele. But both of them bring their comedy in from another play, or possibly another continent. Seriously. Bennett is very funny, but it's the "What the heck is he doing??" kind of funny, which just takes me right out of the play.

It's so unfortunate, because I think the show could be a really great musical, if I could just sit down with the authors for an hour and bounce some ideas off of them. The show's problems and how to fix them are SO APPARENT, I just wonder why nobody saw them or did anything about it. Kate Shindle is perfect casting as Sympathy, the over-qualified receptionist who longs to be a spy, and Jane Summerhays is a consummate musical comedy villainess, and this could be a huge smash and a great vehicle for both of them. If I were a producer, I would snap this show up.

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October 2nd, 2007

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